Anti-Hero E-Book

Jonathan Wood

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Machines attack MI37 while they're attending Clyde's funeral. Their US equivalent Area 51 contacts them about a version of Clyde (2.0) that has escaped onto the Internet. Area 51 wants their help in catching 2.0 and sends over Agent Gran as their contact. The team follow a lead to a trash dump in India, where they discover 2.0 in the mind of a child, 2.0 believes he is saving the world but to do this must destroy humanity. They head to Area 51 which is attacked by 2.0 and the versions of Clyde they thought were working for MI37, Tabitha activates 2.1 who gets them out of the building but New York City has been destroyed by spore zombies. They trace 2.0's servers to the Arctic where a small Alaskan town is populated entirely by spore zombies. They locate 2.0's massive ice palace base populated by strange, half vegetable life forms that Clyde seems to be creating via biological 3D printers. The group is divided on how best to proceed - eventually Arthur finds a way to save everyone and fix Clyde.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Jonathan Wood

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM JONATHAN WOOD AND TITAN BOOKS

No Hero

Yesterday’s Hero

Broken Hero (October 2015)

ANTI-HERO Print edition ISBN: 9781781168110 E-book edition ISBN: 9781781168127

Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: March 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Jonathan Wood asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2015 Jonathan Wood

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For Tami, Charlie and Emma.

My heroes.

1

Surely some things should be sacred? Surely. That hardly seems unreasonable. Yet, here I am diving for cover behind a gravestone.

Bullets tear into ancient limestone. Stone shards churn the earth around me. I scramble back, vault a tomb, tumble into a yew bush.

A black shape descends from the cloud-clotted sky. A miniature plane, a shadow with blazing barrels and the intention of making me resemble Swiss cheese. The tomb I’m using as cover caves as bullets chew through the lid. My yew bush gets a drastic trim. I sweat and curse.

Then engines whine. The plane veers away, searches for a better line of attack. I heave out my pistol, push a rogue yew branch out of my nostril, take aim.

I think it’s a drone. The sort of thing the US government uses to piss off large portions of Pakistan. Except, I’m not in Pakistan. I’m in Oxford, England.

A drone attack. Here. Now. Nothing is sacred. Because—and I think I can say this with certainty—this is by far the weirdest funeral I have ever been to.

TWENTY MINUTES AGO

Rain falls. A priest mutters somber words. Slowly, with measured movements, I help lower my best friend’s body into the ground.

“To tell you the truth, Arthur,” says a voice in my earpiece, “it’s a bit of an odd feeling, being at your own funeral.”

To tell the truth, it is a bit of an odd feeling when a disembodied, digital copy of the man you’re burying provides color commentary during the burial.

The body we’re sending on a six-foot downward journey once belonged to one Clyde Marcus Bradley. Except it isn’t his original one. Earlier in the month, the original was hijacked by alien mind worms, turned into the human equivalent of a fried egg, and then I shot it. Not something I’m overly proud of.

Anyway, Clyde’s original body is rather indisposed.

However, for a number of really complicated reasons, we had a back-up digital version of Clyde on an ancient Peruvian mask, and a brain dead body that was lying around. Which, thinking about it, was a fairly fortunate coincidence.

So, Clyde went on a wooden mask. And that was OK for a while actually. Until he developed computer super-powers and might have gone a bit insane, and thought it was OK to overwrite other people’s brains with his own. And then he got zapped, or broken, or… well, there was a time-traveling Russian magician involved. So Clyde was dead again. And that’s why we have a body to bury today.

Where things get really complicated is the point where Clyde made numerous back-up copies of himself. And now they’re talking to me at the funeral.

Not creepy at all…

Here and now are neither the time nor the place to deal with that oddness, though. Instead I attempt to shush Clyde—the commentator not the corpse—via the subvocal mike taped beneath my collar.

The difficulty of shushing subvocally should not be understated. My own attempt is met by a stern look from Felicity Shaw. Felicity, my boss. Also Clyde’s boss. Also, my girlfriend. Though not Clyde’s girlfriend. My life is decidedly odd these days, but it’s not that odd.

“I mean,” Clyde continues, “it’s nice of everyone to come. Totally appreciate it of course. The last thing I want is to appear to be ungrateful. That would be terrible. And the flowers… Well, to be honest, I was never really a flowers person. I’m still not. Gosh, it’s difficult to work out what sort of tense to talk about myself with these days. But that sort of ties into my point. Because, despite how lovely and touching this is, it does all seem a little unnecessary.”

Except, “This isn’t for you, Clyde,” I point out.

“Well,” Clyde replies, “it is my funeral.”

But unless you’re starring in an experimental seventies horror film, the point for helping the corpse usually expired along with it.

The way things stand now, as I understand them, three of the back-up versions of Clyde are active. All are in the possession of MI37, Britain’s last line of defense against… well, things like alien mind worms and time-traveling Russian magicians.

MI37 itself consists of me, Arthur Wallace, head of field operations; Felicity, my boss and aforementioned girlfriend (a situation which at the very least rivals Clyde’s existence for the most complicated thing I have to deal with on a daily basis); Kayla, a sword-wielding Scottish woman who technically reports to me, but mostly just intimidates me, and who has super-powers and issues; and Tabitha, a Pakistani goth who fills the roles of both researcher and misanthrope.

I, Felicity, and Kayla own versions 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 of Clyde respectively. He gave them to us on flash drives. Since then they have been downloaded onto and are co-habiting a server back at our office. I believe they’re all watching this through a hacked spy satellite.

Tabitha stands separately. Tabitha… The proud owner of Version 2.1, Clyde’s ex-girlfriend, and the woman for whom this funeral is really being held.

She stands at the head of the grave watching the coffin make its descent, gently shaking as the sobs wrack her body. As I understand it, goths have never been known for wearing cheerful colors even at the best of times. Today, Tabitha appears to have been rinsed of all color by the rain. Black dress. Black make-up. Black studs in her ears and in her face. The crimson swath of hair that graced half her head has been shaved away to leave a uniform quarter inch of black. A skull has been etched into the hair on the back of her scalp. The only colour variation comes from her white tattoos, standing out stark against her dark skin.

She’s taken Clyde’s death hard. I mean, normally if she shows an emotion that isn’t frustration I know something is seriously awry. This public display of grief is indicative of some sort of internal shattering.

“Ash to ash,” the priest intones. “Dust to dust.”

Tabitha’s body quakes with another sob. I think about putting an arm around her, but don’t for fear that would just make it worse. Tabitha’s spent so long keeping everyone at an emotional arm’s length I don’t know how to respond.

“She’s still not talking to me,” Clyde Version 2.2 says in my ear. “To any of us.”

It would be an overstatement to say that I am completely at ease with the Clyde versions. Clyde is… He is dead. Interacting with a digital xerox of him… Well, the simplest actions take on existential meaning. Do I kill him every time I shut his application down? That’s a fun thought to mull over late at night.

My relationship with him, though, is staggeringly functional when compared to Tabitha’s. In a nutshell, they cause abject terror in her. We were only able to get versions 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 onto a work server because she took several personal days after his death. I have a sneaking suspicion that her own version has been reduced to particulate by now.

She sees all of Clyde’s more… aberrant behavior writ large in the smallest of the version’s actions. In her eyes, they are all plotting the end of humanity, all poised to overwrite every brain they see. In fact, this is the first time in at least a week that I’ve seen her remove her hat.

Her hat is lined with tinfoil.

She’s holding it—a small pillbox affair with a black veil to cover her eyes—but I can see the tinfoil poking out around the edges.

I may not be an expert on the subject, but I think I can definitely class “wearing a tinfoil-lined hat because of your boyfriend’s demise” as taking it badly.

She made us all tinfoil hats too. She brought them into the office one day. Mine was a black baseball cap with a red anarchy “A” on the front.

“Wear it,” she said, holding it out to me.

I took a moment to examine it. I noticed the tinfoil.

“Is that…”

“Antenna.” She looked at me, her gaze flat and hard, face expressionless. “For a small psi-resistor in the brim. Put it on.”

“But it’s tinfoil, right?”

Tabitha’s gaze remained merciless. “Cheaper and lighter than copper. Easier to hide. Put it on.”

I hesitated. Tabitha met my eye. I have met the eyes of things beyond human ken, defied them, and lived to tell the tale. This was way more intimidating. I put the hat on. It crinkled.

I have to wear it at all times in the office now. We all do. Felicity has a black straw bonnet. Kayla has a trucker hat. If one of us takes our hat off Tabitha freaks out. The hats also seem to disrupt cellphones and the office wireless. I think it’s only a matter of time before Felicity sets fire to hers, Tabitha’s mental well-being be damned.

Tabitha replaces her hat, takes a fistful of earth and scatters it on the coffin. I keep my cap balled in my fist. Tabitha is starting to look at me in frustration. But this ceremonial hat removal has been the first chance to check in with the office.

“Anybody try to blow up the world since we’ve been here?” I subvocalize. It’s been about a week since the last attempt, a surprising dry spell for MI37, and I’m starting to feel suspicious. As if someone’s trying to lull me into a false sense of security.

“No, nothing at all. Everything positively silent on the more-than-mundane front. Even mundane crime seems to be taking a day off. I think the most exciting thing that’s happened so far is that Version 2.3 hacked into Tabitha’s files.”

When you are attempting to surreptitiously chat with an electronic copy of your best friend at his own funeral beneath the notice of his now paranoid ex-girlfriend, this is not the best news to receive.

I make a noise as if an invisible man had just given me the Heimlich maneuver. This in turn causes Felicity to take an anxious step toward me, Kayla to roll her eyes, and Tabitha to grab her hat. The priest pauses mid-spiel to give me an odd look. I try to pass it off as a sob.

Tabitha is staring desperately at my hat now. Felicity has replaced her bonnet. Kayla’s foil-lined trucker hat is in place.

“He did what?” I manage to say beneath my breath.

“He misses her.” A pause. “We all do.”

Part of me thinks I should be more sympathetic. If this was Clyde, really Clyde, if it was the man in the coffin I would be. But these… versions. I get why they fight Tabitha’s point-of-view, but I wish they could do it in a more respectful way. The way I think meat-and-bone Clyde might have done. “If Tabitha finds out, she’s going to take an industrial magnet to your hard drive,” I hiss.

Tabitha, for her part, is starting to mouth words at me across Clyde’s open grave. “Put. It. On.”

“It’s worse than you think,” Clyde tells me. I fail to see how this is possible.

“She’s working on a programming code to debug the brains of people telepathically mind wiped by the dead me.”

I’m actually relieved. Normally when I see no way for things to get worse, the world surprises me with its resourcefulness and warped sense of humor. This revelation is merely worse for the Clyde versions’ chances of reconciling with Tabitha. Me and the rest of the world are emerging remarkably unscathed.

“Do you think that I should send her flowers?” Clyde asks.

“Put. It—”

I can’t deal with this. I put the hat on. It crinkles.

This, I think, is probably the weirdest funeral I have ever been to.

I reach down, grab a fistful of dirt, look at the coffin. And even though I just stopped talking to some version of Clyde, I feel the loss. That is my friend lying there. My eyes sting. Saving the world sucks sometimes.

I let the soil drop from my hand, down into the hole.

The lid of the coffin explodes.

What? What just…? What?

For a moment everything is completely still. The priest in the middle of signing the cross. Kayla in the middle of reaching for her fistful of dirt. My hand still out. My palm still open.

How? I wonder. How did I manage to make exploding soil?

Then it comes down at us, swooping, engines shrill, machine guns rattling. Dirt, and wood, and stone fly, mashed into a fine paste of detonating detritus by the oncoming drone.

It drops out of nowhere, hurtles forward. A tiny contrail streams out from one wing.

I fling myself at a gravestone, half somersault over it, land upside down in mud and dying flowers as the drone’s machine guns turn the grave marker from holy to holey.

Judging this cover to be, in technical terms, for shit, I lunge across open ground, vault a low tomb, and fall into a yew bush.

The drone comes on. I duck lower, feel the heat and wind of the bullets shredding the world around me. And then the moment passes and I’m still breathing. I grab the pistol from my shoulder holster, try to take aim. The thing is moving furiously fast. I give leading-the-target the old college try, but I might as well be shooting at the moon.

“Wait until it’s closer,” Felicity yells. She’s behind what’s left of a cedar tree and a significant amount of bullet-generated wood pulp.

I’d point out that waiting until it’s closer significantly ups the chances of my being turned into pâté, but unfortunately I know that Felicity knows that. Not that she doesn’t care. At least I assume she cares. The whole dating thing seems rather dependent on the assumption that she doesn’t want me turned into flavorful meat paste. But this is a work situation, and with work, the whole avoiding death thing usually ends up taking less precedence than it really should.

I scan for Kayla. It’s always good to know where your friend with super-powers is in situations like this. Saving your arse being the optimal place in my opinion.

She appears to be halfway up a tree.

While significantly further from my arse and its proximal saving zone than I’d like, she does have her sword out. I too am the proud possessor of a sword, but I have yet to work out how to conceal it on a daily basis. Along with speed and strength that would make Wonder Woman blink, Kayla also seems to have the skill to hide a three foot katana on her person regardless of the outfit.

The black dot is growing bigger again. And louder. And deadlier.

It closes on us. Like a lightning bolt flung by a heavily bearded deity. We are a shooting gallery of targets, all lined up in a row. Bullets chew up the ground, racing toward me. I fling myself sideways, firing blindly. Something terrifyingly hot blows my shoe off. I spin and yell.

I come up, gun still raised, blink mud from my eyes.

Kayla is in the air. Behind her, the tree she climbed sways back, bending from the force of her leap. The drone is coming in low and hard, closing the distance. Kayla’s whole body is a curve, sword high, feet extended. An Olympic gymnast committing beautiful, graceful suicide.

Closer. With each millisecond, closer.

She snaps the sword down.

And misses.

For the first time in my life, I see Kayla miss.

The drone dances away, spins down between trees, a defiant barrel roll. Its guns still blaze. Paving a path of bullet holes.

Kayla slams into the ground behind the drone, skids through the dirt, never losing her balance for a second. She stares after the machine in hatred.

I pull up my gun, but my eyes aren’t on the drone. I’m looking for Felicity. I’m making sure she’s OK.

And there she is, performing a pirouette of her own, as her cedar tree becomes a stump. She comes around the toppling trunk, pistol raised, barrel barking. A beautiful economy of motion.

God, my girlfriend is a badass.

Then the drone speeds by, outpaces her ability to aim, sweeps low. The air cracks in its wake and it banks hard, seeming to skid through the air.

And Tabitha. Tabitha, momentarily forgotten in the confusion. She stands at the foot of Clyde’s grave. Frozen there. Staring at the drone devouring the distance. She’s got one hand up clamping her hat to her head.

I snap my eyes from Tabitha to the drone. Lead the target. Felicity’s words echoing in my memory. I’ve been putting in a lot of time at the range since Clyde died. Failing to save the life of your friend tends to cause that sort of behavior. And Felicity is keen for me to not follow in his footsteps. Her voice: lead the target.

I lead it. I fire. The gun cracks and jumps in my hand. Again.

Bullets eat the ground before Tabitha. Eight feet away. Six. Four.

I fire again. Again.

Tabitha flings herself backwards, through the air. Down. Down into Clyde’s grave.

Three feet.

Again. Again. Three shots until the magazine runs dry.

Two feet.

The last shot leaves my gun.

One.

The path of the drone’s gunfire deviates, swings wildly away. The angry chatter of the guns clicks to an abrupt halt. The pitch of the drone’s engines scales octaves. And smoke. There is smoke in the sky.

I hit it. Jesus. I actually hit the bloody thing.

It screams out of the air. Less a meteor now, and more a wounded bird. It plows toward a wall, low stone marking the cemetery’s boundary. And then it detonates. The percussive blast ripping through the air. Shrapnel scours through damp earth. Fire billows—a phoenix’s last flight.

Felicity. My first thought is for her. I move forward. My shoeless foot skidding through the mud.

She climbs up from behind the destroyed cedar tree, grabs me. “Nice shooting, Tex.”

I kiss her, heart and pulse hard in my throat. Hold her to my chest. All around us: the wreckage of the attack. Steaming chunks of metal embedded in shattered gravestones. The priest lying in the fetal position praying at the top of his lungs. Me and my girlfriend, holding each other, holding smoking guns in our spare hands.

No question. Weirdest funeral ever.

2

“What, in the name of all feck, was that?”

Kayla is pissed. Well, Kayla is always pissed, but she appears to have slid closer toward the rabid-animal-fury end of the scale than usual.

“A drone,” I say. “It was an attack by an unmanned drone.”

Kayla glances at me, then Felicity. “I honestly do not have a feckin’ clue what you see in him.” To me, “Of course it was a feckin’ drone. Feckin’ why?”

Somehow, knowing that Kayla is on my side is never as reassuring as I think it should be.

I shrug.

Felicity steps away from me, gives us both a slightly suspicious stare. “If either of you pissed off any governments recently, now is the time to come clean.” It strikes me as a little sad that she’s not joking.

I try to clear my head, but adrenaline is still flooding the engine. I want to just shoot or run away from everything. “A malfunction?” I manage to suggest. “Some test gone horribly wrong?” It has to be something like that. Drones don’t just attack people.

Felicity shakes her head. “The government doesn’t test armed drones anywhere near major urban centers.”

Kayla nods. “What Wales is for.”

I reach up to the anarchy cap, still perched slightly absurdly on top of my head. “I’ll check in with the versions. See if they’re picking up any chatter.”

“No!” a voice screams.

We all spin to stare at Clyde’s grave. There is Tabitha, dirt-spattered, splinter-strewn, clambering out of… Jesus. That’s… I don’t even want to think about it. She was in her boyfriend’s grave. Why on earth could I not have hit that damn drone a moment or two earlier?

“It’s him,” she says. She’s wild-eyed, hanging on to her hat with one hand, using the other to flap madly at us like a grounded fish. “It’s them.” She glances up at the skies, while heaving herself bodily out of the grave. “The versions,” she hisses.

“Oh.” Felicity’s face is a mask of sympathy. “Tabitha. No.” She goes toward her, arms out. “It’s not them. You’re safe. It was just—”

Except I don’t get to find out what it just was, because at that point a Mercedes plows through the gap blown in the cemetery wall by the detonated drone, and careens between the graves toward us.

3

The Mercedes—a silver, growling thing—bucks over the sodden ground, over uprooted stone, through shrapnel-dug trenches. It rears over Clyde’s grave. Felicity seizes me around the waist, flings me sideways. I bite dirt. The car crashes down.

A tire buries itself in the open grave, spins wildly. The back tires kick, the Mercedes lurches forward, twists, tilts down, drives itself into the earth. The rear tires kick once more, but one’s up in the air now, and the other just sprays mud.

Lying sprawled, I grab my gun, jab it at the car. I stare down the barrel. But I don’t know who to shoot at. What to shoot at. The car is empty. The driver’s seat void of manic ne’er-do-wells with kamikaze urges.

“What in all hell?” Aliens I have dealt with. Sorcery has become more than passing familiar. But homicidal machinery? That is a new one.

In the face of this weirdness, I hit upon a reliable battle plan. “We have to get out of here,” I say.

“Well put.” Felicity clambers to her feet then gives me a hand up. “We figure out what the hell this is later. Right now we just bail.”

Tabitha is staring at the car. “It’s them,” she wails. “It’s Clyde.”

But it’s not. It can’t be. Clyde is dead. And I was just talking to the versions. They are far from homicidal.

Except something did just autopilot a car at us. Something… hell, it must have hacked into the car’s computer, taken more control than I thought it could.

But who?

I think back to Felicity’s question. Have I pissed off any major governments? I did cancel my subscription to a few junk email lists I’d found my way onto. But I can’t imagine that any major retail chains would take that this badly, even in this economy.

We need to get out of here. But can we even trust our own cars? Will Felicity’s Satnav turn rogue? Try to instruct us to death? Turn left off this cliff now?

I’d rather not chance it. In fact I’d rather be a good mile from anything with a computer. Except we’re in the middle of a city, the countryside nowhere in sight. The whole options thing is looking very limited right now.

The best hiding places I can figure are the houses, shops, across the road that rings the cemetery. They at least would provide moderate cover from vehicular projectiles while we plan the next step.

“OK,” I say. “We’re getting out of here,” I say. “Whoever’s trying to kill us, needs to try a damn sight harder.”

This seems a popular suggestion. We move. Kayla accelerates past me, leaps up on what’s left of the cemetery wall, surveys the scene. I keep pace with Felicity. Tabitha is between us, wide-eyed and silent now—a state bordering on catatonia. She’s not bleeding heavily from anywhere obvious, but the fact that she just spent some quality time in her semi-dead boyfriend’s grave could account for the symptoms, I suppose.

Another crunch of steel and stone from behind us. I glance back. A Jeep has breached the wall and is struggling over the craters and liberally strewn grave markers. I point my pistol, open fire. Smoke starts pouring from the Jeep’s hood.

The rest of us make it to the wall ahead of the floundering Jeep. We vault it. And then we pause and we stare at the road. At a road full of even more cars. Our only route of escape looks remarkably like a death trap.

Vehicles have slammed to a halt in the middle of the road. People stand around open car doors staring. They have cellphones and bewildered expressions.

Surely not every car has a computer in it. And those that do… well, they can’t all control the steering. I think.

Hell, I don’t have any better plans right now.

Plus, beyond the cars lies a store selling televisions of the dubious knock-off variety. A widescreen monstrosity in the window shows a slowly revolving shot of the Statue of Liberty staring imperiously out at the world. Shelter.

I point at it, using the universal language of fleeing. We lunge into the street. Concerned citizens approach us. Kayla punches one in the throat. They stop approaching.

Their cars, however, don’t.

A parked Honda lurches forward. I see its owner gesticulate wildly, mouth open in what must be a yell. His car is silver, in need of a wash, and aimed directly at my legs.

I jump, take the hit on my hip. Pain shoots through me. My shoulder comes down on the hood and I roll up the windshield. The car barely had time to accelerate but on top of everything else it hurts. I seriously need to restrict the things coming at me to cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol.

Then a second car shoots forward. The pedestrians are panicking now. Driverless cars slam together. Something crashes into the Honda, sending me rolling to the tarmac. A van bears down. I roll more, try to align myself between tires. Keep my head down.

The van thunders over me, hits something else and shudders to a stop. I lie, face in the tarmac, breathing in short gravelly breaths. I am alive, I remind myself. Still alive. I need to move.

Something plows into the van’s side, shoves it sideways. Tires bear down on me. My rolling takes on a desperate edge. Something crashes from the opposite direction. My cover becomes distinctly narrower.

I scramble forward. My fingers rasp against asphalt. More impacts all around me. The car above my head shaking and shuddering like an epilepsy victim. Then I’m beneath another car, this one slung closer to the ground. The exhaust pipe scorches me through what’s left of my jacket.

Then the curb is before me. Full of milling feet. I get an arm out. A shoulder. Someone grabs my hand, heaves. I slip up and out, shoulder protesting.

Felicity is there, holding my hand, helping me from my knees to my feet. She grabs me in a savage hug. And I’m not the only one in this relationship fearing for the other’s safety, I see.

It’s always nice to have something to live for so clearly defined for you.

Then a sound from behind. Another screech of metal, a grunt of over-exerting engines.

Someone grabs me around the shoulder, bowls me over. I roll, come up staring at where I just stood.

A car vaulted the others. Its hood now occupies the space where my head used to be.

I stare at my rescuer. Kayla. She holds both Felicity and me. “Feckin’ idiots.” She shakes her head.

Tabitha stands in the store doorway, still staring and wide-eyed. I depart Kayla’s grip, shove Tabitha forward and in. We need to get away from the display window. I don’t want some errant vehicle sending death-sized shards flying at us all.

The store is dark, narrow, mostly illuminated by opposing walls of TVs. They all show some laminated-looking presenter standing in Times Square, being assaulted by neon and billboards.

We push deeper in. A terrified looking man with too much gel in his hair and too little slack in his T-shirt stares at us, wide-eyed. We stand, eyes locked for a moment. Like panicked gunslingers at high noon. Slowly he extends his left arm, points to a TV.

“You want a Sony?”

Then every screen in the store goes white. Everything in the store is suddenly cast in bright unflattering light. The reflection from the man’s greasy hair is almost blinding. There’s a high-pitched whine building in the room. I see Felicity’s hand go to her mouth. I’m glad I was too vain to get metal fillings.

Then an explosion behind us. We spin as one. A TV blown out. Glass shards scattered on the floor. Wires spitting sparks in the set’s empty corpse.

Then another. Another. A whole column of them on one side of the store. Then the column facing it. And then, racing down the store, closing down on us, detonation after detonation. The whole store filling with flying glass and plastic shrapnel. TV remotes fly across the room. Circuit boards spin like shuriken.

I could really use a break from running away from things, right now.

4

I move. Something whips through my hair. Over my head. I stumble, roll, scramble up. Something opens up the back of my hand, and it stings like I jammed it in a bee hive.

There’s a back door in front of me. Kayla kicks it open. I slam into an office. I kick the door shut. MI37 members and a terrified television sales man mill about the room. Just to add to his confusion, I grab the computer sitting on the man’s desk and fling it out the window.

“What the hell?” he screams, high-pitched enough that I expect Felicity to check her fillings again.

Kayla cocks a fist and looks at Felicity. She shakes her head, but the man backs up fast.

“Are we safe here?” I scan for threats. But obvious shelter is starting to look pretty sparse on the ground.

“Wireless signal. Somewhere without one.” Despite the syntax, it still takes me a moment to realize it’s Tabitha’s words that I can just make out. She stands apart from the rest of us, still not making eye contact with anyone, staring out the shattered window, into the despondent concrete yard beyond.

She’s still thinking it’s the versions. And it’s not them—I’m sure of that—but that doesn’t mean it’s not something like them. Someone who’s in the machines, hacking at computers. And it doesn’t mean Tabitha’s not right about shelter. We do need to be somewhere without wireless.

The countryside is still too far away. Houses and stores are now clearly out of the question.

Where the hell else?

I scan the depressing little yard behind the store. And there, in the middle of it. Our answer. A manhole cover.

“Underground,” I say. “Beneath the earth. The sewers or something.”

Felicity looks at me. It’s not a happy look. Which is fair enough. No one likes going into the sewers. But at least we get paid for it.

So up and through the window we go, with an eye to the heavens in case anyone wants to send another drone at us or hurl a 747 at us for good measure. But nothing breaks the cloud line.

Kayla heaves the manhole cover loose with a burst of rust and stone dust. Insects scrabble to hide from the sudden light of day, like tiny mundane vampires. I stare into blackness and try to focus on my desire to prolong my life until lunch time.

I jump. My feet hit the floor in a splash of cold water. The smell hits me right back. I blanch and think that maybe taking a Mercedes to the face wouldn’t be so bad.

Kayla lands almost on top of me. Felicity and Tabitha opt to take the ladder I missed. We stand together, huddled, all trying to breathe through our mouths. Felicity leans against me, her head resting on my shoulder.

After five minutes it seems like no one’s trying to kill us anymore.

“What the hell was that?” My voice sounds tinny in the tight dark space. Not that I really expect an answer. But this much confusion and bewilderment—I can’t keep it inside. What could we have possibly done to piss off someone that powerful?

“Clyde,” Tabitha says. She’s changed, here in the dark. Her silhouette stands taller now. She is held more rigidly. Her voice has changed too. It doesn’t tremble. It’s flat and cold. “It was Clyde.”

“It can’t have been the versions,” I start.

“It—” Tabitha starts.

“Not here,” Felicity’s voice cuts her off sharply. “Not now.” She pushes away from me. “What we do now is we concentrate on getting out of this, very literal shithole.” She looks about her, points off in one direction. “The office is this way.”

There’s not much else to be said. We start walking.

ONE UNPLEASANT HOUR LATER

We haul ourselves out of another manhole cover remarkably close to MI37 headquarters, near the Oxford train station. We are shivering, stinking, bleeding, and somehow, I realize, all of us are still wearing Tabitha’s tinfoil hats. Felicity’s bonnet resembles a drowned scarecrow draped over her head.

I touch my baseball cap as Felicity punches the six-digit code into the office’s unassuming front door. Tabitha flinches as I do it.

“How the hell has this not fallen off?”

Tabitha shrugs. “Slight electromagnetic field. Your body has one. Everyone does. Opposite charge. The hat has. Static cling basically.”

An angry goth on the cusp of some severe psychological scarring she may be, but Tabitha has got some serious mad professor skills.

“You OK?” I ask her.

“The versions. Just need to delete them. Then I’ll be fine.” She says it flatly, like she’s telling me she needs a cup of coffee.

“No,” I say. “This wasn’t them.”

She’s not looking at me. “Today. Burying all of it. Buried him. Going to bury them. No more Clyde.”

“They would never try to kill you,” I say. “They—” Her look cuts me off. They love you, I was going to say. But she doesn’t want to acknowledge that. And even now I’m not quite willing to force the subject.

“How sure?” Tabitha presses her advantage. “A hundred percent?” She shrugs, backs up a step. “I’m not. But I delete them, I’m sure it’s not them ever again.”

Ah, the violent extremist version of “prevention is better than the cure.” Time to nod, smile, and prepare the sedative. I glance at Felicity. We’re out of the field, so technically this is her territory.

“Tabitha,” Felicity says. “No one is deleting anyone without a debrief and an investigation. And yes, pending that investigation, deleting the versions is on the table. But there needs to be demonstrable reason.”

Tabitha opens her mouth to object, but Felicity rides over her.

“Depending on the debrief, yes I may quarantine the server while we investigate, but that is as far as I will go for now. And before you say another word, consider that I have had bullets, cars, and the internal organs of a flatscreen TV hurled at me today, that I am covered in liquid feces, and that my patience is starting to wear just a tiny bit thin.”

I swear I see Kayla smile at that. Tabitha, on the other hand, grimaces, and starts examining her nails.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, CONFERENCE ROOM B

Apparently when Felicity said there would be a brief break before the debrief she intended for us to wash up, not collapse in a chair and wait for our limbs to lock up. When she comes into the conference room, she has managed to change and wash most of the shit out of her hair. I, on the other hand, feel like a crap-coated mannequin.

She gives me a sympathetic smile, goes to sit next to me, then wrinkles her nose and moves a chair down.

“You OK?”

I think about that. “I knew today was going to be a little odd, but this isn’t exactly how I imagined it all playing out.”

She crooks a smile, but it doesn’t last long. Maybe because I’m having trouble sharing it with her.

“You worried?” she says.

That, I don’t need to think about for long. “I’m terrified. That was an assassination attempt. I mean, it has to have been. And whoever it was, they were not playing around in the slightest. I can’t even think of who has that sort of firepower.”

Felicity momentarily looks as if she’s chewing a lemon slice. “Clyde?” she says eventually.

I shake my head, vehemently. “That doesn’t make any sense. The versions are weird, yes, but they have been nothing but benignly Clyde-like. And the crazy deep-end version of Clyde—who, I want to point out, was only around for a day or two, after a lifetime of being pleasant and helpful—well, he’s dead. We were all there. We saw him die. And beyond that even, sure he did some weird inhuman shit at the end, but nothing that was ever on this scale. He overwrote a brain or two. He didn’t send military drones after people. And all the questionable stuff he did was, you know… it was aimed at saving the world. Whatever the hell happened today, it did not smack of saving the world.”

Felicity nods slowly, digesting. “Something like him. Him but worse. Something that can hack computers. Any computer it seems. That can send a massive power surge to a specific shop in Oxford if it wants to.”

“Maybe,” I nod. “But does it have to be some computer intelligence? Couldn’t it just be someone with a computer and way too much power?”

She nods. “There aren’t many people like that though.”

I nod too. She’s right. We’ve riled up a big nasty, and we don’t even know who or what. The worry shows on Felicity’s face.

“What about you?” I ask. “Are you OK?”

“I think the word you used was terrified.”

“Is it stupid,” I say, “that this threat feels scarier because it’s terrestrial? That it’s not some sort of mythical beast come to life?”

Shaw smiles, slides over to the closer chair. She takes my hand, smiles softly. “A little bit,” she says.

The conference room door bangs open. Tabitha stands there, holding a laptop at arm’s length. She stares at our twined fingers.

“That shit. Stop it.” Tabitha has been decidedly opposed to public displays of office affection since her own relationship took such a colossal nose dive. Felicity pulls her hand away.

Tabitha sets the laptop down gingerly then shoves it at me, and steps away.

“Wire it up. Start it up.”

It’s the Clyde Versions’ laptop. Their home away from the server. And as Tabitha is the only one of us with both a good working knowledge of computers and a physical body, then she’s the one who set it up. She still handles it like it’s nuclear waste, though.

“Ethernet cable,” she says. “Need to plug it in. Killed office wireless. Firewalled to fuck. We are.”

I’m not sure that someone or something that can remotely drive cars at us is going to really care about our firewalls, but it’s better than nothing I suppose. And… “Does that mean I can take my hat off?” I ask.

Tabitha grunts like I just physically hurt her. I decide to take that as a yes. The fact that she doesn’t respond by trying to scalp me, makes me think that I was right. Felicity scrapes her mangled bonnet off with a sigh.

Kayla slouches in as the computer whirs to life. She’s as filthy as I am but seems to be suffering less physically. She slides into a chair, as loose and limber as ever.

On the computer screen, a small black box appears. A cursor winks once, twice. Then the whole screen goes black. And then, resolving out of the darkness: something not entirely dissimilar to a college dorm room. Three beds. A massively overburdened bookshelf. A few Klimt prints.

A man’s head pokes into the frame. Scruffy beard, slightly disheveled hair, square glasses, innocent expression. Then the man’s identical twin appears. And then another.

The three Clyde versions peer out at us.

“So, sort of wondering, as one does,” says one of them, “about what in the name of all that is good, green, and holy happened out there?”

In a small guilty place, I think I should know which version is speaking, but they are, quite literally, identical. The clothes aren’t exactly the same, but each one of them is wearing cords, and a shirt, and the same tweed jacket. It’s basically impossible to distinguish them.

Not unsettling at all, that.

“Did a drone attack you?” asks another. “Definitely looked like a drone.”

“Very drone shaped,” says the third.

“A military drone, that is,” comments the second. “Not the male bee. Unless it was a male bee that happened to be shaped like a military drone. Though…” He cocks his head on one side. “… a touch unlikely.”

“A very salient clarification.” The third one points to the second one.

The first turns around. “Don’t mean to interrupt, you two. More of an interjection really. And, yes, obviously, appreciate the accuracy of the question. But, I was thinking, you know, again, just a potential suggestion, but should we sort of listen and see if they confirm it first?”

The third one points to the first. “Excellent idea. Love it. All ears.” He puts his hands behind his ears and pushes them out.

Office meetings have become decidedly longer ever since we got three Clydes instead of one.

“Why?” Tabitha stares at the screen as if hoping to crack it.

“Hello,” says the second Clyde. He looks at his feet. “Good to see you, Tabby. You look fantastic. Glad you’re OK. I was really rooting for you.”

“Me too,” nods the third. “Heart in mouth. Metaphorically. Binary code in the recycle bin may be a closer analogy. But, you know. Totally glad. We’re all glad. And you really do look lovely too. Really like the hair.”

“Why?” Tabitha screams at them. “You murderous little fucks! Why’d you try to kill us?”

Which, I suspect, is not exactly how the versions saw this going. They recoil from the screen.

I need to not be weirded out by them, and to focus on keeping MI37 functional. “Look,” I say, trying to play the peacekeeper, “this isn’t an interrogation.”

“A magnet to your pissing hard drive,” Tabitha growls.

“We wouldn’t!” protests the first Clyde.

“Never,” says the second. “Never ever.”

“You know how we feel,” says the third. “Subtlety is not our greatest asset. You know that. You loved us, Tabby. We love you.”

“Shut up!” Tabitha snaps. Her fingernails are digging into the surface of the table. “I loved Clyde. Clyde, you are fucking not.”

“Let’s just calm—” I start.

“Enough,” Felicity snaps. “This is not a witch hunt, and it is not a couple counseling session. Clydes, I want to know exactly what you saw. Not just on the ground. Digital chatter. Energy spikes.”

“Lie. They fucking will,” Tabitha says. “Save their arses. ’Til they’re ready to try again.”

“Tabitha!” Felicity snaps. “For the last time. We are not making any snap judgments. I personally find it very unlikely that Clyde, any bloody version of him, is on a MI37-oriented murder spree.”

Tabitha snaps around at her. Somewhat to my surprise, I feel my fists bunch.

But then a voice cuts into our conversation. A voice out of place in a secure government facility, because it’s a voice I don’t recognize at all.

“Well, Director Shaw,” it says, “that assessment may be rather a misstep, I’m afraid to say.”

5

We all spin to stare at the new voice’s source. Even Kayla. My stomach sinks as I turn, bottoming out somewhere around my knees. The last time someone showed up at the door of our conference room unannounced, things did not exactly proceed well from there.

He’s a tall man, even has a few inches on me. Narrow frame, though there’s some breadth in his shoulders. Angular cheeks. Black hair swept low over his forehead in what, I suspect, is a rather obvious move to hide a receding hairline. A wire brush of a mustache. The sort that Hitler made unpopular. Good suit though. And a briefcase. And an umbrella.

“Who the hell are you?” Felicity snaps.

Which means she doesn’t know him. Which means he’s not an ex-boyfriend. Which means he’s definitely a step up from our last unannounced guest. I immediately like him just a little bit better.

“Name’s Duncan Smythe. Lovely to meet you all. No need to stand up. I’m fully briefed. I know all your names, backgrounds, all that sort of stuff. The people who put these briefing documents together are terribly thorough, and so it only seems polite to read them. I’m from the British consulate to the United States of America, by the way. And sorry to burst in so unannounced. Again, the door codes were in the briefing jacket, and well, you know as well as I do that you don’t have a doorbell.” He speaks fast and clipped, despite the ripe vowels. A moneyed, educated voice. The sort you’d expect to hear on an old BBC show telling you about how we’re beating the snot out of Rommel.

“I have a damn phone,” Felicity points out.

I look back and forth from her to the newcomer. He seems entirely unfazed by her anger. Not that it is anger exactly. I’ve seen Felicity angry, and this… well, this is a dry heat. It’s more like she’s establishing a dominance pattern. The alpha dog of the pack making sure her status is recognized.

Kayla has the same bored, bemused expression she’s had since Tabitha started haranguing the versions. Tabitha seems like she’s just anxious for this little moment to be over so she can get back to the aforementioned haranguing.

And me, well… I don’t know. If I had to put money down, I’d say Smythe is the sort of person who comes with answers, but not the sort of answers anybody likes.

“Yes,” Smythe says to Felicity. “I have your phone number. Another of the many itemized pieces of information I was provided with.” He nods in the direction of his briefcase. “Between you and me, it’s a little bit of overkill actually. But, given the events of the morning, our schedule has moved up a little bit, and so, and again this is with the utmost apologies, the following meeting has become rather urgent.”

“Following meeting, my arse,” says Felicity. “If you want to come back—”

The tall man smiles apologetically, pops open his briefcase, and pulls out a small red file folder. He passes it to Felicity.

She eyes it suspiciously but silently. She unwinds the piece of red string holding the folder closed and pulls out a sheet of cream paper. Classy paper. The sort of paper that you’d expect a man with a voice like Smythe’s to hand out from small file folders.

Felicity looks from the paper to Smythe, then back at the paper. She returns it to the folder and hands it back to him with a tight little smile entirely absent of mirth.

“Proceed,” she says.

Smythe nods politely. I have a sneaking suspicion that the alpha dog thing just got derailed.

“Sorry,” says one of the Clydes from the laptop. “Bit difficult to see from back here, what’s going on?”

Felicity’s eyes snap to the laptop like an eagle sighting prey. And I knew I wasn’t going to like Smythe’s answers.

“Should he be here?” she asks.

Smythe shrugs. “According to my briefing documents none of your versions have been compromised.”

“Can’t be sure,” Tabitha declares, though I suspect she’s clueless about what either Smythe or Felicity is referencing. But she’s smart enough to spot an opportunity when it presents itself. “Better be safe. Shut them down.”

To be honest, I’m not entirely opposed to her argument. I don’t believe the versions tried to kill us, but computers have been turned against us today. What if they were corrupted?

But Clyde was my best friend…

But the versions aren’t Clyde. Not quite.

Felicity shakes her head at Tabitha. She sits, and pulls the laptop over toward her, out of Tabitha’s reach. She points the webcam in Smythe’s direction.

“This,” Smythe says, hanging his umbrella on the back of his chair, and laying down his briefcase, “is, for the record, information classified as top secret. Which I realize is rather redundant for people like yourselves, but they make me say these things. Dotting i’s and crossing t’s and all that red tape malarkey.

“I am here representing the British government, and its US consulate, to speak to you about a joint mission with the CIA for which your expertise is required.”

“CIA?” Tabitha immediately looks suspicious. That said, Tabitha wears a tinfoil hat these days, so if anyone was going to look suspicious it was probably her.

“The Americans?” There is significantly less antipathy in Felicity’s voice. To be honest it sounds a little more like excitement.

Smythe inclines his head at Felicity and ignores Tabitha’s heckling.

“You are all, of course, familiar with Clyde Marcus Bradley,” he says.

“I am,” says one of the Clydes. A smile twitches across my face. It feels like an irresponsible thing to have done.

“He’s dead,” Tabitha says.

“Indeed,” Smythe smiles broadly. “Very much so. We have it on file. Deceased earlier this month. October ninth to be precise. The Didcot incident.” He smiles again and nods at the laptop. “However, it does seem to be having a little trouble sticking.”

There’s a noise from the laptop, something like a gulp. “This isn’t an undead rights thing is it?”

Smythe reaches into his briefcase, retrieves a small bottle of water, cracks the seal, and sips.

“While this matter does intimately concern you,” he nods at the computer, “it is not exactly about your rights. Or if so only indirectly so.”

“Is it about that thing we downloaded?” one of them says. “Because that link was misleading, and I really had no interest in violating copyright. I’m generally opposed to anything that involves the word violating. Pretty strict principle in fact. Though—”

Smythe clears his throat. “Maybe I should continue and that would clear muddy waters,” he suggests.

“Oh yes,” says a Clyde.

“Good idea,” says another.

“Sorry,” the third throws in for good measure.

Smythe arches dark eyebrows. “Indeed.” He sips his water again.

“Mute them. I can.” Tabitha suggests. “Happy to.”

Smythe’s eyebrows arch in her direction now. I get the impression he’s used to dealing with the sort of smart efficient people who put together extensive background documents on other people, and not with… well, us.

“Six copies of Mr. Bradley’s personality were created,” Smythe tells us. “The original copy, in Peru, came into being on October sixth.”

“Version 2.0,” a subsequent Clyde version adds.

“Indeed,” Smythe says, and this time I expect to see ice cubes form in the water.

“Sorry,” says Clyde.

I’m fairly sure Smythe is reconsidering Tabitha’s offer of the mute button.

“Everyone shut up and let the man speak.” Felicity is leaning forward in her seat.

“So, yes,” Smythe continues, “Version 2.0 was created in Peru. Then five copies of that version were made. One is in the possession of Miss Mulvani.” Smythe nods in Tabitha’s direction. Which means that I was wrong in assuming she’d destroyed hers.

“Three are represented here,” he appears to force himself to acknowledge the laptop. “And one was given to Miss Devon Alman, Mr. Bradley’s former partner. She has however destroyed her copy. That leaves five copies in existence.”

And I’ve been assuming Smythe is a smart man, but that seems like a pretty basic math error.

“Four,” I correct him. “There are four copies left. The version of Clyde on the mask, Version 2.0—that was destroyed. He was killed.”

Smythe smiles in an entirely surprising way. Like a very jolly shark.

“Really, Mr. Wallace?” he says. “Is that so?”

I look around the room, rather nonplussed. I see similarly blank faces. I mean, we just buried him. We were pretty convinced of his status as a dead man. After all, we were there. We saw it happen. The mask that housed Clyde’s personality, that was Clyde, was split in two when a time-traveling Russian magician pulled the power out of it at exactly the same moment that I, in an attempt to save Clyde, sort of… well, I haymaker-ed him.

Honestly, it seemed like a valid plan at the time.

But we were there, and we saw him die, so I go with, “Isn’t it?” There is a grating noise from across the table. Tabitha’s knuckles are the shade of white that I imagine exists at the heart of the sun. She appears to be literally crushing the table beneath her hands.

Even Kayla looks mildly interested now.

Smythe doesn’t say a word.

“This morning?” I ask, refusing to wholly believe it. “At the funeral? That was seriously Clyde?” I think about that for a moment. “No,” I say. “No. He’s dead.” I insist it at this tall, smooth little diplomat with his made-for-DVD personality. “He’s dead.”

Smythe shrugs. “Personally, Mr. Wallace, I don’t know. You say he’s dead. The CIA claim he’s hiding out on a server farm somewhere on the North American continent, hacking federal government servers like a child picking candy out of jars.”

“It’s not possible,” I say.

But—

“Yes.” Tabitha drops the word like a tombstone. “It is. If he downloaded himself in time. Before the mask broke.”

“It’s not possible,” I say again. Because… because… No. Except, is it just I don’t want it to be true? Dealing with the fact that my best friend is three digital copies of himself is hard enough without having to deal with his super-powered, murderous evil twin. I drop my head to the table.

No. Just… no.

“What evidence exactly do the CIA have?” Felicity asks.

And I love Felicity Shaw. The voice of reason in the insanity my life has become.

“Well, I’m sure they’ll tell you.” I look up to see if Smythe has another sharkish grin, but he’s shuffling papers back into his briefcase. Putting the cap back on his little water bottle.

“What do you mean?” And any hint of being offended by Smythe taking the alpha dog role is gone. But her excitement seems tinged with a little anxiety now.

Smythe retrieves one final item from his briefcase before snapping it closed. A simple manila folder this time. He places it before him. “Your flight details,” he says. “To America. You’re leaving tomorrow. Heathrow. British Airways. Of course. Business class, I think you’ll find. The Americans are footing the bill.”

It’s moving too fast. Everything is always moving too fast in this job. The Americans want us to… what? Find and kill Version 2.0 of Clyde. A version that this functionary is saying tried to kill us this morning. A version that I worked alongside. That, hell, I had a hand in creating. A version I counted as a friend.

And yet… And yet…

I wish that Smythe’s story didn’t make sense. That it had plausible deniability. But there is a terrifyingly implacable logic to it all.

I look at Felicity. She does not seem to share my feelings. Instead Christmas seems to have come early for Felicity Shaw. Personally I don’t see exactly what there is to be excited about.

“Is there anything else we need to know?” she asks.

Smythe considers this, head cocked to one side. “You should try to move about the cabin at least once an hour. That’ll stop the blood pooling. Good for the heart. It’s a long flight.”

He pushes back his chair, stands up, smiles perfunctorily. “I’ll see myself out.”

And he leaves us there, sitting in the crater of yet another bombshell.

6

FELICITY SHAW’S APARTMENT. EVENING

Felicity and I sit opposite each other in her living room, and try and work out what to say.

It’s been a quiet few hours since Duncan Smythe left Conference Room B at MI37 headquarters. Felicity dismissed the others so they could pack. We worked out if we wanted pasta or curry for supper. I finally washed the fecal matter off myself and applied rubbing alcohol to my various abrasions. And then this—sitting in a chair, and trying to work out where our heads are at.

“Do you believe it?” Felicity asks me finally.

I stare at the magazines on the coffee table—copies of The Economist, and National Geographic, because Felicity Shaw is not a frilly or fluffy woman. And she certainly has a way of cutting to the chase.

“I…” I say, which pretty much sums it all up. And then, eventually, “I don’t want to.”

Felicity smiles. “That’s not exactly answering the question.”

“Do you believe it?” I respond, which still isn’t.

Felicity smiles again. She sees through me the same way most people see through windows.

She puts her feet up on the couch. There’s a framed Georgia O’Keeffe print behind her looking floral and ambiguously suggestive. Some of her hair has fallen down in front of her eyes. She pushes it back.

“I knew Clyde…” she shrugs, “for a long time. I recruited him out of Cambridge University four years ago. I promoted him to field agent. I briefed and debriefed him a hundred times.”

“Debriefed sounds dirty,” I say.

“You know you use humor as a defense mechanism?” she asks.

Like a window.

“I knew Clyde longer than you,” she says, “though never as intensely as you did, if that’s the word. Whatever died when we fought the Russians, wasn’t the man that I recruited. The man I recruited was already long dead. The Didcot incident, or whatever Smythe called it.

“And,” she continues, “the man I recruited, that I promoted, that dead man, he could never have done any of the things we saw today. But whatever he became, whatever was left of him after he died… I don’t know. It seems like it’s on the scale of possibility. I don’t even know what the versions are capable of. They seem harmless, but even the original Clyde, your friend, my recruit, wasn’t harmless. That man knew enough magic to level a house. And if that was corrupted…” She trails off, but I think it’s just because she’d rather not follow that line of logic out loud.

“So you do believe,” I conclude for her.

She shifts on the sofa, sinking into a slouch. “I’m saying I don’t know. I can’t know right now. But I know that the CIA wouldn’t be shipping us across the Atlantic if they didn’t have a damn good reason.”

The CIA. Jesus. I shake my head.

Felicity shifts in her chair. “What?” I ask. I know her well enough now to know when she’s hesitating about saying something.

“Just… you know, the CIA.” That, I think, effectively sums up what Hollywood has told me about that agency.

“Is it wrong for me to be a little bit excited?” Felicity asks.

“Excited?” I try to fit that word into the scenario facing us. The scenario where something vast and powerful that may or may not be our former colleague and friend is trying to kill us. I struggle.

“I mean,” Felicity goes on, without waiting for me to find the right words for what I’m thinking, “the Americans. The CIA. They asked for us. For MI37. A month ago our agency was on the verge of being shut down. Now a super-power is asking for our collaboration. This is huge.”

She bites her lower lip, not enough to show teeth, just the corner of it tucked away. She has a slightly faraway look in her eyes.

And I guess I hadn’t really thought about anything in those terms.

“So…” I venture, “we should have our lives threatened by our friends more often?”

She flaps a hand at me. “No. I didn’t mean it like that.” She shakes her head slightly. “It’s just… They’re taking us seriously, Arthur. They’re taking me seriously. Do you know how long MI37 has been out in the political cold? Trying to do anything at all? This could change all of that. Proper staffing. Proper budget.”